Colonial Dublin

Dublin in 1610 - reprint of 1896

Dublin and its inhabitants were transformed by the upheavals of the 16th and 17th centuries in Ireland. These saw the first thorough English conquest of the whole island under the Tudor dynasty. While the Old English community of Dublin and the Pale were happy with the conquest and disarmament of the native Irish, they were deeply alienated by the Protestant reformation that had taken place in England, being all almost all Roman Catholics. In addition, they were angered by being forced to pay for the English garrisons of the country through an extra-parliamentary tax known as "cess". Several Dubliners were executed for taking part in the Second Desmond Rebellion in the 1580s. The Mayoress of Dublin, Margaret Ball died in captivity in Dublin Castle for her Catholic sympathies in 1584 and a Catholic Archbishop, Dermot O'Hurley was hanged outside the city walls in the same year.

In 1592, Elizabeth I opened Trinity College Dublin (located at that time outside the city on its eastern side) as a Protestant University for the Irish gentry. However, the important Dublin families spurned it and sent their sons instead to Catholic Universities on continental Europe.

The Dublin community's discontent was deepened by the events of the Nine Years War of the 1590s, when English soldiers were required by decree to be housed by the townsmen of Dublin and they spread disease and forced up the price of food. The wounded lay in stalls in the streets, in the absence of a proper hospital. To compound dissafection in the city, in 1597, the English Army's gunpowder store in Winetavern Street exploded accidentally, killing nearly 200 Dubliners. It should be noted, however, that the Pale community, however dissatisfied they were with English government, remained hostile to the Gaelic Irish rebels led by Hugh O'Neill.

As a result of these tensions, the English authorities came to see Dubliners as unreliable and encouraged the settlement there of Protestants from England. These "New English" became the basis of the English administration in Ireland until the 19th century.

Protestants became a majority in Dublin in the 1640s, when thousands of them fled there to escape the Irish Rebellion of 1641. When the city was subsequently threatened by Irish Catholic forces, the Catholic Dubliners were expelled from the city by its English garrison. In the 1640s, the city was besieged twice during the Irish Confederate Wars, in 1646 and 1649. However on both occasions the attackers were driven off before a lengthy siege could develop. In 1649, on the second of these occasions, a mixed force of Irish Confederates and English Royalists were routed by Dublin's English Parliamentarian garrison in the battle of Rathmines, fought on the city's southern outskirts.

In 1650s after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Catholics were banned from dwelling within the city limits under the vengeful Cromwellian settlement but this law was not strictly enforced. Ultimately, this religious discrimination led to the Old English community abandoning their English roots and coming to see themselves as part of the native Irish community.

By the end of the seventeenth century, Dublin was the capital of the English run Kingdom of Ireland – ruled by the Protestant New English minority. Dublin (along with parts of Ulster) was the only part of Ireland in 1700 where Protestants were a majority. In the next century it became larger, more peaceful and prosperous than at any time in its previous history.

[edit]From a Medieval to a Georgian City

See Also Georgian Dublin

Powerscourt House: Dublin residence of Viscount Powerscourt.
In the 1980s it was sensitively turned
into a shopping centre
Powerscourt Georgian ceiling
interior Georgian door

By the beginning of the 18th century the English had established control and imposed the harsh Penal Laws on the Catholic majority of Ireland's population. In Dublin however the Protestant Ascendancy was thriving, and the city expanded rapidly from the 17th century onward. By 1700, the population had surpassed 60,000, making it the second largest city, after London, in the British Empire. Under the Restoration, Ormonde, the then Lord Deputy of Ireland made the first step toward modernising Dublin by ordering that the houses along the river Liffey had to face the river and have high quality frontages. This was in contrast to the earlier period, when Dublin faced away from the river, often using it as a rubbish dump.

Dublin started the 18th century as, in terms of street layout, a medieval city akin to Paris. In the course of the eighteenth century (as Paris would in the nineteenth century) it underwent a major rebuilding, with the Wide Streets Commission demolishing many of the narrow medieval streets and replacing them with large Georgian streets. Among the famous streets to appear following this redesign were Sackville Street (now called O'Connell Street), Dame Street, Westmoreland Street and D'Olier Street, all built following the demolition of narrow medieval streets and their amalgamation. Five major Georgian squares were also laid out; Rutland Square (now called Parnell Square) and Mountjoy Square on the northside, and Merrion Square, Fitzwilliam Square and Saint Stephen's Green, all on the south of the River Liffey. Though initially the most prosperous residences of peers were located on the northside, in places like Henrietta Street and Rutland Square, the decision of the Earl of Kildare (Ireland's premier peer, later made Duke of Leinster), to build his new townhouse, Kildare House (later renamed Leinster House after he was made Duke of Leinster) on the southside, led to a rush from peers to build new houses on the southside, in or around the three major southern squares. The massive northside houses ending up becoming tenements, into which large numbers of poor people moved, often being exploited by landlords, who packed in entire families into each large Georgian room. Only the area of the old city named Temple Bar (located between Dame Street and the river Liffey) and the area around Grafton Street survived with their narrow medieval street pattern intact.

For all its Enlightenment sophistication in fields such as architecture and music (Handel's"Messiah" was first performed there in Fishamble street), 18th century Dublin remained decidedly rough around the edges. Its slum population rapidly increased - fed by the mounting rural migration to the city - housed mostly in the north and south-west quarters of the city. Rival gangs known as the "Liberty Boys" -mostly weavers from the Liberties - and the "Ormonde Boys" - butchers from Ormonde quay on the northside - fought bloody street battles with each other, sometimes heavily armed and with numerous fatalities. It was also common for the Dublin crowds to hold violent demonstrations outside the Irish Parliament when the members passed unpopular laws.

One of the effects of continued rural migration to Dublin was that its demographic balance was again altered, Catholics becoming the majority in the city again in the late 18th century.

[edit]Rebellion, Union and Catholic Emancipation

The old Irish Houses of Parliament
Built in the 1720s, the building served as the seat of The House of Commons and House of Lords until 1800. It is now a branch of the Bank of Ireland.

Until 1800 the city housed an independent (though still exclusively Anglican) Irish Parliament, and as mentioned it was during this period that much of the great Georgian buildings of Dublin were built. By the late 18th century, Irish Protestants - the descendants of British settlers - had come to see Ireland as their native country, and the Irish Parliament successfully agitated for increased autonomy and better terms of trade with Britain. Liberals began to talk of repealing the Penal Law and ending discrimination against Catholics. (See Ireland 1691-1801)

However, under the influence of the American and French revolutions, some Irish radicals went a step further and formed the United Irishmen to create an independent, non-sectarian and democratic republic. United Irish leaders in Dublin included Napper Tandy,Oliver Bond and Edward Fitzgerald. Wolfe Tone, the leader of the movement, was also from Dublin. The United Irishmen planned to take Dublin in street rising in 1798, but their leaders were arrested and the city occupied by a large British military presence shortly before the rebels were to assemble. There was some local fighting in the city's outskirts - such as Rathfarnham, but the city itself remained firmly under control during the 1798 rebellion.

The Protestant Ascendancy was shocked by the events of the 1790s, as was the British government. In response to them, in 1801 under the Irish Act of Union, which merged the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland the Irish Parliament voted itself out of existence and Dublin lost much of its political influence. Though the city's growth continued, it suffered financially from the loss of parliament and more directly from the loss of the income that would come with the arrival of hundreds of peers and MPs and thousands of servants to the capital for sessions of parliament and the social season of the viceregal court in Dublin Castle. Within a short few years, many of the finest mansions, including Leinster House, Powerscourt House and Aldborough House, once owned by peers who spent much of their year in the capital, were for sale. Many of the city's once elegant Georgian neighbourhoods rapidly became slums. In 1803, Robert Emmet, the brother of one of the United Irish leaders launched another rebellion in the city, however, it was put down easily and Emmet himself was hanged.

In 1829 Irish Catholics recovered full citizenship of the United Kingdom. This was partly as a result of agitation by Daniel O'Connell, who organised mass rallies for Catholic Emancipation in Dublin among other places. O'Connell also campaigned unsuccessfully for a restoration of Irish legislative autonomy. O'Connell was later elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, and is remembered among trade unionists in the city to this day for calling on the British army to suppress a strike during his tenure.

[edit]Late 19th Century

After Emancipation and with the gradual extension of the right to vote in British politics, Irish nationalists (mainly Catholics) gained control of Dublin's municipal government with the reform of local government in 1840 Daniel O'Connell being the first Catholic Mayor in 150 years. This prompted many of Dublin's Protestant and Unionist upper classes to move out of the city proper to new suburbs such as Ballsbridge, Rathmines and Rathgar - which are still distinguished by their graceful Victorian architecture and by originally loyalist organisations like the Royal Dublin Society. A new railway also connected Dublin with the middle class suburb of Dún Laoghaire, then called Kingstown.

Dublin, unlike Belfast in the north, did not experience the full effect of the industrial revolution and as a result, unemployment was always high in the city. Industries like the Guinness brewery, Jameson Distillery, and Jacob's biscuit factory provided the most stable employment. New working class suburbs grew up in Kilmainham and Inchicore around them. Another major employer was the Tram system, run by a private company - the Dublin United Tramway Company³.

In 1867, the Irish Republican Brotherhood or 'Fenians', attempted an insurrection aimed at the ending of British rule in Ireland. However, the rebellion was badly organised and failed to get off the ground. In Dublin, fighting was confined to the suburb of Tallaght, where several hundred Fenians made a failed attack on the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks.

The failure of this rebellion did not mark the end of nationalist violence however. In 1882, an offshoot of the Fenians, who called themselves the Irish National Invincibles, assassinated two prominent members of the British administration with surgical knives in the Phoenix Park. The incident is known as the Phoenix Park murders.

[edit]Monto

See Also Monto

1888 German map of Dublin

Paradoxically, although Dublin declined in terms of wealth and importance declined after the Act of Union, it grew steadily in size throughout the 19th century. By 1900, the population was over 400,000. While the city grew, so did its level of poverty. Though described as "the second city of the (British) Empire" its large number of tenements became infamous, being mentioned by writers such as James Joyce. An area called Monto (in or around Montgomery Street off Sackville Street) became infamous also as the British Empire's biggest red light district, its financial viability aided by the number of British Army barracks and hence soldiers in the city, notably the Royal Barracks (later Collins Barracks and now one of the locations of Ireland's National Museum). Monto finally closed in the mid 1920s, following a campaign against prostitution by the Roman Catholic Legion of Mary, its financial viability having already been seriously undermined by the withdrawal of soldiers from the city following the Anglo-Irish Treaty (December 1921) and the establishment of the Irish Free State (6 December1922).

[edit]The Lockout

Statue of James Larkin on O'Connell Street (Oisín Kelly 1977)

In 1913, Dublin experienced one of the largest and most bitter labour disputes ever seen in Britain or Ireland - known as the Lockout. James Larkin, a militant syndicalist trade unionist, founded the Irish Transport and General Worker's Union (ITGWU) and tried to win improvements in wages and conditions by the use of sympathetic strikes. In response, William Martin Murphy who owned the Dublin Tram Company, organised a cartel of employers who agreed to sack any ITGWU members and to make other employees agree not to join it. Larkin in turn called the Tram workers out on strike, which was followed by the sacking, or "lockout" of any workers in Dublin who would not resign from the union. Within a month, 25,000 workers were either on strike or locked out. Demonstrations during the dispute were marked by vicious rioting with the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which left 3 people dead and hundreds more injured. James Connolly in response founded the Irish Citizen Army to defend strikers from the police. The lockout lasted for six months, after which most workers, many of whose families were starving, resigned from the union and returned to work.

[edit]The End of British Rule

An Irish War of Independence memorial in Dublin

In 1914, afer nearly three decades of agitation, Ireland seemed on the brink of Home Rule (or self government), however, instead of a peaceful handover from direct British rule to limited Irish autonomy, Ireland and Dublin saw nearly ten years of political violence and instability that eventually resulted in a much more complete break with Britain than Home Rule would have represented. By 1923, Dublin was the capital of the Irish Free State, an all but independent Irish state, governing 26 of Ireland's 32 counties.

[edit]Howth Gun Running 1914

Unionists, predominantly concentrated in Ulster, though also with concentrations in Dublin (Edward Carson the Unionist leader was a Dublin man), resisted the introduction of Home Rule and founded the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) - a private army - to this end. In response, nationalists founded their own army, the Irish Volunteers to make sure Home Rule became a reality. In April 1914, thousands of German weapons were imported by the UVF into the north (see Larne gunrunning). When the Irish Volunteers attempted to do the same in July, at Howth, near Dublin, British troops from the Scottish Borderers regiment tried to seize their arms, but were unsuccessful. The soldiers were jeered by Dublin crowds when they returned to the city centre and they retaliated by opening fire on a crowd at Bachelor's Walk (along the quays), killing three people. Ireland appeared to be on the brink of civil war by the time the Home Rule Bill was actually passed in September 1914. However the outbreak of World War I led to its postponement. John Redmond, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party called on nationalists to show their gratitude by joining the British Army. Thousands of Dubliners did so (particularly those from working class areas, where unemployment was high) and many died in the war. This caused split in the Volunteers. The majority, who followed Redmond's leadership formed the National Volunteers. A militant minority kept the title of Irish Volunteers, some of whom were now prepared to fight against, rather than with British forces for Irish independence.

[edit]Easter Rising 1916

In April 1916 about 1250 armed Irish republicans under Padraig Pearse staged what became known as the Easter Rising in Dublin in pursuit not of Home Rule but of an Irish Republic. One of the rebels' first acts was to declare this Republic to be in existence. The rebels were composed of Irish Volunteers and the much smaller Irish Citizen Army under James Connolly. The rising saw rebel forces take over strongpoints in the city, including the Four Courts, Stephen's Green, Bolands Mill, the South Dublin Union and Jacobs Biscuit Factory and establishing their headquarters at the General Post Office in O'Connell street. They held for a week until they were forced to surrender to British troops. The British deployed artillery to bombard the rebels into submission, sailing a gunboat named the Helga up the Liffey and stationing field guns at Cabra, Phibsborough and Prussia street. Much of the city centre was destroyed by shell fire and around 450 people, about half of them civilians, were killed, with another 1,500 injured. Fierce combat took place along the grand canal at Mount street, where British troops were repeatedly ambushed and suffered heavy casualties. In addition, the rebellion was marked by a wave of looting and lawlessness by Dublin's slum population and many of the city centre's shops were ransacked. The rebel commander, Patrick Pearse surrendered after a week, in order to avoid further civilian casualties. Initially, the rebellion was very unpopular in Dublin, due to the amount of death and destruction it caused and due to the fact that many Dubliners had relatives serving in the British Army.

Though the rebellion was relatively easily suppressed by the British military and initially faced with the hostility of most Irish people, public opinion swung gradually but decisively behind the rebels, after 16 of their leaders were executed by the British military in the aftermath of the Rising. In December 1918 the party now taken over by the rebels, Sinn Féin, won an overwhelming majority of Irish parliamentary seats. Instead of taking their seats in the British House of Commons, they assembled in the Lord Mayor of Dublin's residence and proclaimed the Irish Republic to be in existence and themselves Dáil Éireann (the Assembly of Ireland) -its parliament.

[edit]War of Independence 1919-21

Between 1919 and 1921 Ireland experienced the Irish War of Independence -a guerrilla conflict between the British forces and the Irish Volunteers, now reconstituted as the Irish Republican Army. The Dublin IRA units waged an urban guerrilla campaign against police and the British army in the city. In 1919, the violence began with small numbers of IRA men (known as "the Squad") under Michael Collins assassinating police detectives in the city. By late 1920, this had expanded into much more intensive operations, including regular gun and grenade attack on British troops. The IRA in Dublin tried to carry out three shooting or bombing attacks a day. Such was the regularity of attacks on British patrols, that the Camden-Aungier streets area (running from the military barracks at Portobello to Dublin Castle) was nicknamed the "Dardanelles" (site of the Gallipoli campaign) by British soldiers.

The conflict produced many tragic incidents in the city, of which a number are still remembered today. In September 1920, 18 year old IRA man Kevin Barry was captured during an ambush on Church street in the north city in which three British soldiers were killed. Barry was hanged for murder on November 1, despite a campaign for leniency because of his youth. Another celebrated republican martyr was IRA gunman Sean Treacy, who was killed in a shoot out on Talbot street in October 1920 after a prolonged manhunt for him. The British forces, in particular the Black and Tans, often retaliated to IRA actions with brutality of their own. One example of this was the Black and Tans burning of the town of Balbriggan, just north of Dublin in September 1920 and the "Drumcondra murders" of February 1921, when Auxiliary Division troops murdered two suspected IRA men in city's northern suburb.

The bloodiest single day of these "troubles" (as they were known at the time) in Dublin was Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920, when the Michael Collins' "Squad" assassinated 18 British agents (see Cairo gang) around the city in the early hours of the morning. The British forces retaliated by opening fire on a Gaelic football crowd in Croke Park in the afternoon, killing 14 civilians and wounding 65. In the evening, three republican activists were arrested and killed in Dublin Castle.

In response to the escalating violence, the British troops mounted a number of major operations in Dublin to try and locate IRA members. From January 15-17 1921, they cordoned off an area of the north inner city bounded by Capel st, Church st and North King st, allowing no one in or out and searching house to house for weapons and suspects. In February they repeated the process in the Mountjoy Square and then the Kildare st/Nassau st areas. However, these curfews produced few results. The largest singe IRA operation in Dublin during the conflict came on May 25, 1921, the IRA Dublin Brigade burned down the The Custom House, one of Dublin's finest buildings, which housed the headquarters of local government in Ireland. However, the British were soon alerted and surrounded the building. Five IRA men were killed and over 80 captured in the operation, which was a publicity coup but a military disaster for the IRA.

[edit]Civil War, 1922-23

Following a truce (declared on July 11, 1921), a negotiated peace known as the Anglo-Irish Treaty between Britain and Ireland was signed. It created a self-governing twenty-six county Irish state, known as the Irish Free State. However it also disestablished the Irish Republic, which many in the nationalist movement and the IRA in particular felt they were bound by oath to uphold. This triggered the outbreak of the Irish Civil War of 1922-23, when the intransigent republicans took up arms against those who had accepted a compromise with the British. The Civil war began in Dublin, where Anti-Treaty forces under Rory O'Connor took over the Four Courts and several other building in April 1922, hoping to provoke the British into re-starting the fighting. This put the Free State, led by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith into the dilemma of facing British military re-occupation or fighting their own former comrades in the Four Courts.

After some prevarication and after Winston Churchill had actually ordered British troops to assault the rebels, Collins decided he had to act and borrowed British artillery to shell the republicans in the Four Courts. They surrendered after a two day (28 -30 June 1922) artillery bombardment by Free State troops but some of their IRA comrades occupied O'Connell Street, which saw street fighting for another week before the Free State army secured the capital. (See Battle of Dublin). Over 60 combatants were killed in the fighting, including senior republicans, Cathal Brugha and Harry Boland. About 250 civilians are also thought to have been killed or injured, but the total has never been accurately counted. Oscar Traynor conducted some guerrilla operations south of the city until his capture in late July 1922. Ernie O'Malley, the republican commander for the province of Leinster was captured after a shootout in the Ballsbridge area in November 1922. On December 6 1922, the IRA assassinated Sean Hales a member of Parliament as he was leaving Leinster House in Dublin city centre, in reprisal for the executions of their prisoners by the Free State. The following day, the four leaders of the republicans in the Four Courts (Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Dick Barret and Joe McKelvey) were executed in revenge. Dublin was relatively quiet thereafter, although guerrilla war raged in the provinces. The new Free State government eventually suppressed this insurrection by mid 1923. In April, Frank Aiken, IRA chief of staff, ordered the anti-treaty forces to dump their arms and go home. The civil war left a permanent strain of bitterness in Irish politics that did much to sour the achievement of national independence.

[edit]Independence

Dublin Castle, seat of British rule until 1922.

Dublin had suffered severely in the period 1916-1922. It was the scene of a week's heavy street fighting in 1916 and again on the outbreak of the civil war in 1922.

Many of Dublin's finest buildings were destroyed at this time; the historic General Post Office (GPO) was a bombed out shell after the 1916 Rising; James Gandon's Custom House was burned by the IRA in the War of Independence, while one of Gandon's surviving masterpieces, the Four Courts had been seized by republicans and bombarded by the pro-treaty army. (Republicans in response senselessly booby trapped the Irish Public Records Office, destroying one thousand years of archives). The new state set itself up as best it could. Its Governor-General was installed in the former Viceregal Lodge, residence of the British Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, because it was thought to be one of the few places where he was not in danger from republican assassins. Parliament was set up temporarily in the Duke of Leinster's old palace, Leinster House, where it has remained ever since. Over time, the GPO, Custom House and Four Courts were rebuilt. While major schemes were proposed for Dublin, no major remodelling took place initially.

[edit]The "Emergency"

Main article: The Emergency

Ireland was officially neutral during the Second World War (see Irish neutrality during World War II) . So much so that it was not even called "the war" in Irish discourse, but "The Emergency". Although Dublin escaped the mass bombing of the war due to Ireland's neutrality, the German air-forcebombed Dublin on May 31, 1941, and hit the North Wall – a working-class district in the north inner city – killing 34 Irish civilians and wounding another 90.[4] The bombing was declared accidental, although many suspected that the bombing was deliberate revenge for de Valera's decision to send fire engines to aid the people of Belfast following major bombing in that city. One faction of the IRA hoped to take advantage of the war by getting German help and invading Northern Ireland. In December 1939 they successfully stole almost all the Irish Army's reserve ammunition in a raid on the Magazine Fort in Dublin's Phoenix Park. In retaliation, De Valera interned the IRA's members and executed several of them. The war years also saw rationing imposed on Dublin and the temporary enlargement of the small Jewish community by Jews who fled there from Nazi persecution.

[edit]Tackling the Tenements

The first efforts to tackle Dublin's extensive slum areas came on the foundation of the Iveagh Trust in 1891, and the Dublin Artisan Dwellings Company, but these could only help several thousand families. The main focus by government in 1900-1914 was in building 40,000 cottages for rural workers. Some public planning for the city was made in the first years of the Irish Free State and then effected after 1932, when Eamon de Valera came to power. With greater finances available, and lower wages due to the Great Depression, major changes began to take place. A scheme of replacing tenements with decent housing for Dublin's poor began. Some new suburbs such as Marino and Crumlin were built but Dublin's inner city slums remained.

It was not until the 1960s that substantial progress was made in removing Dublin's tenements, with thousands of Dublin's working class population being moved to suburban housing estates around the edge of the city. The success of this project was mixed. Although the tenements were largely removed, such was the urgency of the providing new housing that little planning went into the building of the new public housing. New and growing suburbs like Tallaght, Coolock and Ballymun instantly acquired huge populations, of up to 50,000 people in Tallaght's case, without any provision of shops, public transport or employment. As a result, for several decades, these places became by-words for crime, drug abuse and unemployment. In recent years, such problems have eased somewhat, with the advent of Ireland's so-called 'Celtic Tiger' economic boom. Tallaght in particular has become far more socially mixed and now has very extensive commercial, transport and leisure facilities. Ballymun, Ireland's only high rise housing scheme, has been largely demolished and re-built in recent years.

Ironically however, given Ireland's new found economic prosperity, and consequent immigration, there is once again a housing shortage in the city. Increased employment has led to a rapid rise in the city's population. As a result, prices for bought and rented accommodation have risen sharply, leading to many younger Dubliners leaving the city to buy cheaper accommodation in counties Meath, Louth, Kildare and Wicklow, while still commuting daily to Dublin. This has arguably impacted negatively on the quality of life in the city - leading to severe traffic problems, long commuting times and urban sprawl.

[edit]Destruction of Georgian Dublin in the 1960s

See also: Development and preservation in Dublin

Georgian house on St. Stephen's Green A surviving Georgian house on St. Stephen's Green, stuck between a victorian building (picture right) and a 1960s office block (left). Over half the Georgian buildings on St. Stephen's Green having been lost since the Georgian era, with many demolished in the 1950s and 1960s

Nelson's Pillar on O'Connell Street -destroyed 1966

As part of the building programme that also cleared the inner city slums, from the 1950s onwards, historic Georgian Dublin came under concerted attack by Irish Government's development policies. Whole swathes of 18th century houses were demolished, notably in Fitzwilliam street and St Stephen's Green, to make way for utilitarian office blocks and government departments. Much of this development was fuelled by property developers and speculators keen to cash in on the buoyant property markets of the 1960s, late 70s and 1980s. Many schemes were built by Government supporters with the intention of profitably letting to highly desirable State tenants such as government departments and State agencies. It has been proven that many buildings were approved by government ministers personally connected with the developers involved - often to the detriment of the taxpayer and the proper planning and preservation of Dublin city.

Some of this development was also encouraged by Ireland's dominant nationalist ideology of that era, which wanted to wipe away all physical reminders of Ireland's colonial past. An extreme example of this kind of thinking was the destruction by the IRA of Nelson's Pillar in O'Connell Street in 1966. This statue of the famous British admiral was a Dublin landmark for a century, but was blown up by a small bomb shortly before the 50 year commemorations of the Easter Rising. In 2003, the Pillar was replaced as a landmark by the Dublin Spire which was erected on the same spot. A 120 m tall tapered metal pole, it is the tallest structure of Dublin city centre, visible for miles. It was assembled from seven pieces with the largest crane available in Ireland. It is the tallest sculpture in the world

Far from the destructive practices of the 1960s diminishing as time went on, if anything they got steadily worse, with the concrete office blocks of earlier times being replaced with the idea of Georgian pastiche or replica offices in place of original 18th century stock. Whole swaths of Harcourt Street and St. Stephen's Green were demolished and rebuilt in such a fashion in the 1970s and 1980s, as were parts of Parnell Square, Kildare St., North Great George's St. and many other areas around the city. Many saw this practice as an 'easy way out' for planners; a venerable Georgian front was maintained, whilst 'progress' was allowed to continue unhindered. This planning policy was pursued by Dublin Corporation until around 1990, when the forces of conservationisim finally took hold.

However, it was not only sites associated with the British presence in Ireland that fell victim to Irish developers. Wood Quay—where the oldest remains of Viking Dublin were located was also demolished, and replaced with the Headquarters of Dublin's local government, though not without a long and acrimonious planning struggle between the government and preservationists. More recently there has been a similar controversy over plans to build the M50 motorway through the site of Carrickmines Castle—part of the Pale's southern frontier in medieval times. It has recently been alleged that much controversial building work in Dublin—over green spaces as well as historic buildings—was allowed as a result of bribery and patronage of politicians by developers. Since the late 1990s, there have been a series of tribunals set up to investigate corruption in Dublin's planning process.

[edit]Northern Troubles

Dublin was mostly unaffected by the Troubles (a civil conflict that raged in Northern Ireland from 1969 to the late 1990s), with the exception of several bombings in the early seventies, in particular one on Talbot street in 1974. The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings on May 17, 1974 were a series of terrorist attacks on Dublin and Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland which left 33 people dead (26 of them in Dublin), and almost 300 injured, the largest number of casualties in any single day in the Troubles. Although no organization claimed responsibility for the attacks at the time, loyalist paramilitaries from Northern Ireland (in particular the Ulster Volunteer Force) were widely blamed. In 1993 the Ulster Volunteer Force admitted they carried out the attacks. It has been widely speculated that the bombers were aided by members of the British security forces.

Other occasions when the Northern conflict impacted on Dublin were 1972, when angry crowds burned down the British Embassy in Dublin in protest at the shooting of 13 civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday (1972) by British troops, and 1981, when Anti H-BlockIrish republican protesters tried to storm the new British Embassy in Ballsbridge in response to the IRA hunger strikes of that year. After several hours violent rioting with Gardaí, the protesters were dispersed.

Other, more peaceful and larger demonstrations were held in the 1990s in Dublin, calling for the end of the Provisional IRA campaign in the North. The largest of these took place in 1993, when up to 20,000 people demonstrated in O'Connell Street after the IRA killed two children with a bomb in Warrington in northern England. Similar demonstrations occurred in 1995 and 1996 when the IRA ended its ceasefire, called in 1994, by bombing London and Manchester. Most recently on 25 February2006 rioting broke out between Gardaí and a group of Irish Republicans protesting the march of a "Love Ulster", loyalist parade in O'Connell Street. The small group of political activists were joined by hundreds of local youths and running battles continued on O'Connell Street for almost three hours, where three shops were looted. The marchers themselves were bussed to Kildare street for a token march past Dáil Éireann which prompted some 200 or so rioters to move from O'Connell street to the Nassau street area, setting cars alight, attacking property, including the headquarters of the Progressive Democrats, before dispersing.

See also - 2006 Dublin riots

[edit]Regeneration of Dublin

The Spire of Dublin, the world's tallest sculpture

Since the 1980s, there has been a greater awareness among Dublin's planners of the need to preserve Dublin's architectural heritage. Preservation orders have been put on most of Dublin's Georgian neighbourhoods. The new awareness was also reflected in the development of Temple Bar, the last surviving part of Dublin that contained its original medieval street plan. In the 1970s, Córas Iompair Éireann (CIÉ), the state transport company, bought up many of the buildings in this area, with a view to building a large modern central bus station on the site with a shopping centre attached. However, most of the buildings had been rented by artists, producing a sudden and unexpected appearance of a 'cultural quarter' that earned comparisons with Paris's Left Bank. The vibrancy of the Temple Bar area led to demands for its preservation. By the late 1980s, the bus station plans were abandoned and a master plan was put in place to maintain the Temple Bar's position as Dublin's cultural heartland, with large-scale government support. That process has been a mixed success. While the medieval street plan has survived, rents have rocketed, forcing the artists elsewhere. They have been replaced by restaurants and bars which draw thousands of tourists but which has been criticised for over commercialisation and excessive alcohol consumption. Also, in the late 1980s the Grafton and Henry street areas were pedestrianised.

However, the real transformation of Dublin has occurred since the late 1990s, when the so called 'Celtic Tiger' economic boom took effect. The city, previously full of derelict sites, has seen a building boom - especially the construction of new office blocks and apartments. The most visually spectacular of these developments is the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC)- a financial district almost a kilometre long situated along the North quays. While the former tramways had been torn up in the 1950s in favour of buses, the new Luas tram service started in 2004. Though slow to develop, Dublin Airport had become the 17th busiest international airport by 2006.

[edit]Heroin Problem

In the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Dublin suffered a serious wave of drug addiction and associated crime throughout its working class areas. The introduction of the drug heroin into the inner city in the late 1970s accentuated social problems associated with unemployment, poor housing and poverty. These problems were twofold. Firstly, heroin addiction caused a wave of petty crime such as muggings, robbery and so forth as addicts tried to secure money for their next 'fix'. This made many of the affected areas all but un-inhabitable for the rest of the population. In addition, many addicts ultimately died from diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis caused by sharing needles. Secondly, the drug trade saw the establishment of serious organised crime syndicates in the city, whose use of violence led to many murders being committed. The most notorious of these killings was that of the journalist Veronica Guerin in 1996, who was killed by criminals she was investigating for a Sunday newspaper. The drugs problem led to a widespread anti-drugs movement, which peaked in the mid-1990s, whose members tried to force drug dealers out of their neighbourhoods. Some quarters accused anti-drugs activists of being vigilantes, or a front for Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA. Although, the problem of hard drugs in Dublin has now been controlled somewhat, through methadone programmes for addicts and better economic prospects for young people, it is by no means a thing of the past. Most recently, heroin has been suplemented by the introduction of cocaine, including its derivative crack cocaine.

[edit]Immigration

Dublin was traditionally a city of emigration, with high unemployment forcing many of its inhabitants to leave Ireland for other countries, notably Britain and the United States. However, the last decade has seen this process reversed dramatically, with the Irish economic boom attracting immigrants from all over the world. The largest single group to arrive in the city has been returned Irish emigrants, but there has also been very large immigration from other nationalities. Dublin is now home to substantial communities of Chinese, Nigerians, Russians, Romanians and many others - especially from Africa and eastern Europe. After the accession of several eastern European countries in to the European Union in 2004, eastern European became the single largest immigrant group in Dublin. Poland is the most common single point of origin, with well over 100,000 young Poles having arrived in Ireland since late 2004. The majority of them are concentrated in Dublin.